


Tremors

by Intricate6



Category: NCT (Band), WAYV
Genre: Angst, Disability, Domestic Fluff, Essential Tremors, Frustration, M/M, Minor Wong Kun Hang | Hendery/Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas, Neurological Disorders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:14:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26262493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Intricate6/pseuds/Intricate6
Summary: Ten threw his pencil at the wall in anger, relishing the thunking sound it made as it fell onto the ground. He was so done. So done with writing. So done with his tremorsAt this point Ten had only been at it for 30 minutes, probably having at least an hour left due to his procrastination, but an hour more of writing was just a recipe for more frustration and thrown pencils.orTen is having a bad day with his tremors and Kun helps him cope
Relationships: Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Qian Kun
Comments: 12
Kudos: 87





	Tremors

Ten threw his pencil at the wall in anger, relishing the thunking sound it made as it fell onto the ground. He was so done. So done with writing. Stupid Physics.

At this point Ten had only been at it for 30 minutes, probably having at least an hour left due to his procrastination, but an hour more of writing was just a recipe for more frustration and thrown pencils. 

When Ten was getting his coffee this morning before his first class he noticed his tremors were worse than normal, having to use two hands to make sure his drink didn’t spill over the brim, but he’d just chalked up his extra shakiness to nerves as he had a presentation in Humanities. 

However, when Ten went to get lunch after Mandarin his hands were shaking so bad that he could barely grasp his chopsticks, his noodles constantly sliding out of their grasp.

“Do you need any help?” Yangyang asked.

“No,” Ten snapped back, instantly feeling guilty at the way Yangyang shrunk back into his seat. “Sorry,” Ten said, several decibels lower, “I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

“I forgive you,” Yangyang easily replied, shoving food into his mouth.

Ten focused back on his own lunch, but everytime he managed to grasp some noodles they would just slip out of his shaking chopsticks. After several attempts, Ten dropped his chopsticks onto his plate with a clatter.

Lucas looked up from his lunch, eyes crinkling in pity as he took in Ten’s visible frustration. 

“What can I do to help?” he asked, puppy dog eyes starting into Ten’s. 

“Nothing.” Ten suddenly stood up, grabbing his tray. “You know what? I’m actually not that hungry. I’ll see you guys later.”

And with that, Ten walked away, dumping his food in the trash on his way out. 

His phone was definitely going to be full of worried texts later, but Ten was too frustrated at the moment to care. His tremors were only going to get worse as the years progressed and it kind of scared him that on bad days he was already at the point where feeding himself was a struggle. 

But as Lucas always said, he had to stay positive, had to hope that by the time he got to the point where his tremors rendered his hands basically useless that there would be medicine to prevent them. 

Right now there were meds that Ten could take to help with the tremors and Ten had tried some of them while in high school, but the side effects weren’t worth what little they did to stop the shaking of his hands. Some of them stopped the tremors, but made his hands so weak he could barely hold anything. Others had caused depression, making it impossible for him to get out of bed in the morning, his every moment dulled into a big wash of gray. 

So for the moment, Ten was going to hold off on trying even more medications, tired of dealing with the various side effects. 

Ten took the long way to Physics, but still arrived 15 minutes early, so he stood outside of the classroom and opened up his phone, scrolling past the text messages from Yangyang and Lucas and even the one from Kun, who was still in class and really shouldn’t be texting him at the moment. Instead, Ten clicked on Hendery’s name.  _ Hurry up, I got to class early and now I’m alone,  _ he typed.

A few seconds later, Hendery replied,  _ too bad :( _

Ten huffed out a sigh of frustration at the younger and slid his phone into his pocket as the professor unlocked the classroom door. As Ten walked to his normal seat near the back of the class he wondered for the thousandth time why he allowed Hendery to talk him into taking Physics as his science class he needed in order to graduate. 

Hendery had promised Ten that they would have fun taking a class together and that between him and Kun they wouldn’t let Ten fail. So far the latter was true, but as for the former, Ten could say with 100% certainty that taking physics was not in any way, shape, or form  _ fun _ , even if he was taking it with one of his friends.

The only good thing was Hendery took good notes and would send his to Ten after every lecture so that Ten didn't have to worry about missing anything with the strange combination of typing concept notes and writing math notes that he was forced to do. 

Hendery slid into the seat next to Ten a minute before class started with a grin that was practically begging Ten to ask him what had happened, but Ten refused to bite.

Hendery opened his mouth to tell Ten whatever had happened anyways, but just then the professor started his lecture, condemning Hendery to silence for the next 50 minutes. It’s what he deserved for somehow turning a two minute walk into a ten minute one.

The minute class ended, Hendery grabbed onto Ten’s arm. “Guess what?”

“If this is about what made you late then I don’t want to hear it,” Ten answered with a smirk.

Hendery just ignored him and went on with his story “So on the way here I ran into Lucas and we started talking and you wanna know what he asked? He wanted to know if I wanted to go eat dinner with him at the union tonight, just the two of us! Isn’t that great?”

“Amazing,” Ten drawled, earning himself a punch on the arm by Hendery. “Seriously, though, I think you and Lucas could work out. Just don’t have a messy breakup that splits our friend group. I'd probably pick Lucas over you. He’s nicer.”

Hendery sighed. “I’m going to tell Kun. At least your boyfriend will be nice.”

“Winwin would also be a good bet. He’d smile and clap you on the back or something.”

Hendery rolled his eyes and looked away from Ten, focusing his gaze on one of the dorms they were passing by. 

They fell into an awkward silence that consisted of Hendery refusing to meet Ten’s eyes and focusing instead on the campus building and Ten realized he had messed up. “I’m really sorry Hendery. I’m in a bad mood today and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I really do think that you and Lucas will be amazing together. You’ve had crushes on each other for at least a year now and I’m happy Lucas finally gained the courage to ask you out.”

“Wait, he’s had a crush on me all this time and no one told me?”

“I thought you knew! Did you not notice him making moon eyes at you constantly?” Ten dropped his voice lower to mimic Lucas’s, “Oh Hendery what you said was just so deep and impressive because I’m so in looove with you.”

“Please shut up,” Hendery buried his face in his hands.

“Why? Do you not like hearing how much Lucas loooves you?”

Hendery shoved Ten’s shoulder. “Should I talk about how bad you and Kun are? He basically never takes his eyes off of you when you two are in a room together.”

“Oh look at the time. I have to go get changed for dance. Bye Hendery! Have fun on your date with Lucas!” Ten waved and blew a kiss at Hendery’s dumbfounded face as he ran off in the direction of the arts center.

Dance was exactly what Ten needed to distract himself from all of his frustrations and he found himself exiting the studio in a much better mood than when he entered. 

Unfortunately, Ten’s great mood was burst not even half an hour later when he started his physics homework. 

The first problem went decently well, the pencil only shaking slightly in his hand. However, by the time Ten got to the fourth problem, the line for the x-axis of his graph was about as straight as he was.

It was fine though, he could graph with a wiggly axis...and a wiggly vector. 

Ten continued to solve the problem, his numbers getting progressively bigger as it became harder and harder to control the pencil in his grasp. It was fine,though. His numbers were still legible, he could still force his pencil to move at a speed that kept up with his thoughts. Granted, it was physics so his thoughts were slower than a snail. Ten wasn’t in the college of science for a good reason.

Ten powered through the next two problems, his 5’s and 3’s starting to blend together and his words looking more like illegible scribbles than anything else.

But by the time Ten reached the seventh problem, his frustration was beginning to mount.

His goddamn pencil refused to move in the right fucking direction and instead decided to move in the most unexpected of ways. 

Ten found himself leaning his weight over his paper, pressing his pencil so hard into his notebook that his numbers left little valleys on the surface. If only he could get his hands to cooperate, could get them to stop shaking. He just wanted to finish his homework. Was that too much to ask for? 

Apparently it was because the more he worked, the worse his tremors became, increasing to the point where Ten had to focus on forming every single number, every single letter if he wanted to read what he had written.

Ten stopped in the middle of writing out ‘tan’ only getting halfway through the ‘t’ before his frustration was peaking. He was so done with his useless fucking hands and his stupid ass physics homwork that wasn’t feasible to type. 

Before he knew it, his pencil was flying across the room, hitting the wall, and clattering against the floor. Ten took a deep breath and ran his hands through his hair, tears of frustration pricking the corners of his eyes. 

He hated this so goddamn much. Hated his tremors. Hated his stupid genetics. Hated physics. 

Ten grabbed another pencil off of his desk and furiously worked out the rest of the problem, tears starting to fall in earnest as he stared at the mess of scribbles that his writing had become. It was utterly illegible.

Ten wiped away the tears that had started to run down his face and moved onto the next problem. It was fine, he could do this with scribbles and his calculator. He’d be fine.

Three wrong answers later and Ten realized that he would not be fine. At this point his tremors were so bad he could barely even hit the correct key on his calculator.

“For fuck’s sake,” Ten muttered, burying his head in his desk. 

Of course Kun chose that moment to come home, dropping his bag by the door when he saw the state Ten was in.

“What can I do to help?”

“Absolutely nothing. There’s nothing you can do because this homework is due tonight and I need to make sure that I understand all of the concepts so I don’t fail the test.” Ten wiped off more tears that had made their way down his face. “It’s just so annoying. I want to be able to write.” Ten’s voice broke and he buried his face in Kun’s chest so his boyfriend wouldn’t have to witness his crying.

“Okay, well, continuing at this moment isn’t going to help anything so how about we take a small break to eat dinner? Then we can figure out a solution later.” Kun ran his hand slowly through Ten’s hair as he spoke, knowing that the action was Ten’s favorite.

Sure enough, Ten melted into Kun’s touch and let himself be led to the table where Kun had a Safeway bag waiting for them.

Ten immensely appreciated the gesture of Kun getting them something that could easily be eaten without any utensils and he pressed himself even closer to Kun. “You’re amazing,”

“I know.” Kun pushed two chairs together so that they could still cuddle while eating. 

“Seriously.” Ten leaned his head on Kun’s shoulder as he unwrapped both sandwiches, negating the very real possibility that Ten would struggle with undoing the wrapping. 

“Mhm,” Kun ran his hand through Tens hair. “Now eat. Lucas told me that you threw out most of your lunch.”

Dinner was great, full of soft touches and Ten leaning his entire body weight into Kun’s side. However, afterwards, he was forced to deal with the reality that was his physics homework. 

“You could copy Slader and then just actually do it tomorrow,” Kun suggested.

“No, because then I already know the answer so it doesn’t count.”

“I could be your hands?”

“And not do your own homework?”

“Okay, what if you call Hendery and work on it with him? I doubt he’s done it yet.”

Ten turned to face Kun. “That’s actually a really smart idea.”

“Thanks, I tend to have them every once in a while,” Kun replied, but Ten was too busy texting Hendery to pay attention, soon running back off to his desk, Hendery on FaceTime as they started to work on the rest of the problems, Ten manning the calculator. 

Later that night in bed Ten rolled over so that he was whispering in Kun’s ear. “Thank you for earlier. I’m not sure what I would’ve done without you.”

“Thrown more pencils?”

“Maybe.”

Some time passed before Ten spoke again. “Sometimes it really sucks. The tremors I mean. I hate how it can vary so much from day to day. Like some days I can write what notes I need to without a problem, but other days it takes a prayer just to legibly write a couple of sentences. I hate it. And it’s only going to get worse.”

Kun shifted to wrap his arms around Ten’s waist, pulling him closer.

“Like what am I going to do in the future? When I can’t effectively use chopsticks anymore, when I have to fill every cup up less than halfway otherwise it’ll spill over? I know how this is going to end up, Kun. I’ve seen my grandpa go through it. Many years in the future when I have a bad day it’s going to mean that I can barely even feed myself. What happens then?”

“Then you’ll adapt. It’s not going to be easy. It’s never going to be easy, but you’ll figure it out. I’ll even feed you if I have to. Plus, think about how advanced technology will be, there'll be more things to help you out, help you live your life.”

“I think the thing that really gets me is that these are forever, They’re never going away, will only get worse. Just three years ago I could fill an entire notebook with writing and look at me now. Sometimes everything just feels so hopeless. My grandpa always says that the tremors don’t kill you, but they make you wish you were dead and I’m starting to see what he means”

“Hey, don’t think like that. It will suck. One hundred percent. But you can do this, you can figure out how to live your life how you want even with tremors. And don’t forget, you never have to do this alone. You have me and Hendery and Lucas and Yangyang and the rest of our friends. You got this. And when you don’t, we got this for you.”

“Thank you,” Ten murmured. “Sometimes it all just feels so overwhelming and all I can see is hopelessness.”

“That’s alright, I’ll be your light when you need it, just like you are mine.”

“That’s so cheesy,” Ten groaned. “Just go to sleep, you’re starting to get all emotional.”

“Mmkay, I love you.”

“Love you too dumbass.”

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> so basically this was just me venting about my essential tremors bc i was having a bad day and super frustrated. pls feel free to leave a comment or ask any question!!
> 
> [cc](https://curiouscat.me/6_intricate)   
>  [twitter](https://twitter.com/6_intricate)


End file.
